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Tuesday, June 09, 2015

How Do We Get Out From Behind the Ecological Eight-Ball?

This is the logo for the Pando Populus web site. Pando is the name of the largest and oldest organism on the planet - a giant quaking aspen tree, spread over more than a hundred acres, 80,000 years old, connected by a single root system

Here are my 14-pages of notes from the conference I
just attended in Clermont, California.While I agree with most of these thoughts from various presenters some
of it I could quibble with but it’s all worth sharing.A few of the thoughts are mine from the
‘Track’ I presented in.

Learn
more about ‘Process Studies’

Ecological
civilization is our goal

We are
in trouble unless we change and allow the natural systems to teach us how
to live

Mechanisms
have no soul

When
we think the world is a machine there is no incentive to save it

Universities
have been shaped by the mechanism model

We
know we are not machines, then why should we study like we are machines,
presenting what we are programmed to present

We
have to specialize, none of us can do everything, but if we can see the
connections then we all make progress toward our goals.This is the example of nature

Ecological
economics

Free
ourselves from this prison

Catastrophe
means ‘down’

We
should covert the Pentagon into the ‘Natural Guard’ which would do relief
work as climate change begins to wreak havoc on our fragile Mother Earth

Weapons
production facilities should be building rail, solar, wind turbines, and
tidal power systems which would create more jobs than military production
presently does

Some
say Pope Francis should shut up about climate change – he is not a
scientist.But actually he has a
Masters Degree in Chemistry

Check
out the movie called ‘Snow Piercer’

The
good news is that capitalism is dead

We
currently have a Mafia-ocracy at the national and global levels

Financial
markets act like a super global government

We
need a peace academy to counter military academies

67% of
Baltimore’s black men under 18 are in the criminal justice system

Need
to expand national youth service to do needed things across our
country.But to pay for that, and
other good programs that are needed, we must first cut the Pentagon budget
and tax the rich

If
everybody only considers his or her own point of view then we
compete.If we stay open to others
we learn to cooperate

Old
economic models depend on scarcity

We now
have an abundance of information thus we can have more cooperation

Makerism
– Robots will do the work and we will have 3-D printers to make things
(this came from our MIT friends). We won’t need much trade because we will
make what we need.Print your own
house

Coop-i-tition

Master
Card wants to be a social justice company.They want to get rid of paper money.Don’t need big banks.

If we
get rid of paper money and go to computer money – the corporate oligarchy
could turn off the money flow to anyone who speaks out against the system

Chasing
debt drives the economic growth culture

Artificial
scarcity – banks sell us money as a product which we pay interest on.
Never enough money because the monetary system managers make money by
regulating the $$$ supply

The
caring components of our society are devalued and are being defunded

Public
banks don’t dramatically change the capitalist system as debt just moves
from private to public institutions but they are still important anyway

Need
more ways to have transactions between people outside of the debt system

We
sing to make ourselves happy because we are the ones we have been waiting
for

Human
survival is not a solo act

We are
the building blocks determined not to become the stumbling blocks

Simplify,
simplify, simplify

The
tigers are vanishing.What is the
answer?Build more cages?No, build more forests

Limiting
factor in capitalist growth these days is resources

If you
don’t grow the economy then you have to solve poverty by redistribution
which is an unpopular topic

Unlimited
growth is increasing environmental and social problems

In
China the obstacles to reevaluate the consequences of endless growth are
less than in the west

The
economy is primarily studied as an isolated system.The issues of waste and environmental
consequences must be factored into economics

Globalism
destroys communities at the national level.Corporate feudalism is a global commons of another kind

We’ve
been brainwashed by individualist thinking.We need community

Gross
national happiness has been declared in the constitution of the Buddhist
kingdom of Bhutan

If we
continue with the growth model nations will keep fighting wars over
resource control

We
need a federation of nations to agree to limit war and resource
competition

If
people were truly self interested they’d reject individualism

Pando
aspen tree grove in Utah has lasted 80,000 years with one inter-connected
root system.This is the way we
should live.The pando grove is
now in danger of destruction from failing environment

Be fruitful
and multiply is the only commandment in the Bible that we have obeyed

It is
a humanly controlled fact that we can’t now make changes thus it is a
humanly controlled fact that this could change

The
power of the purchased media is the leading voice for continued growth

The
irresistible power of the unarmed truth

The
education system is a key prop that holds people to the growth system

Many
universities claim to be ‘value free’ which means they will teach what
ever someone pays them to teach

Unsustainable
means terrible catastrophe

Without
virtue happiness cannot be.We
have a crisis of lack of virtue.

Love
is an action.We need a
civilization of love and an international debt jubilee.Usury is a crime

We the
people should own the banks.Globally 40% of banks are publicly owned

We
should bail out the students by writing off their student debt

Renting
or hiring of people puts them in a position of being a slave.People should be partners in a
cooperative firm where they have real rights

In
Honduras a ‘private city’ is being built and if you go there you would
have no rights in this corporate city. Is Detroit a step on the road to
private cities in the US?

We now
have a system not of private property but private theft

Priority
of labor – 100,000 workers at Mondragon Coops in Spain

Neo-abolitionism
is the movement against renting workers where they have no rights of labor

The
‘Bank of the People’s Labor’ was set up for the Mondragon coop
movement

We
don’t know American history.Frederick Douglass had a lot to say about wage slavery.We don’t have to go to Europe and Marx
to study this

Cities
are where production is happening as folks worldwide move to urban areas

Slaves
and farm animals were often fed the same slop

African-Americans
and nature both experienced domination

Why is
this conference so overwhelmingly white?

In
1961 MLK spoke to the AFL-CIO and offered to consolidate the civil rights
movement with labor but labor turned him down

Labor
studies in the US usually ignore slave rebellions.Where is Harriet Tubman in that
history?It’s an obsession with
white identify

Building
trades unions in the US consistently reject overtures by black activists
to build strong inclusive unions

Economo-centrism
– the naturalization of the economy

Industrial
revolution was a satanic mill that ground people into dust.The disembeding of economy from
society.The market ruled
all.That separation translates
into the way we think and know today

Capitalism
has functioned by making itself the only story in town

We
can’t handle differences, everything is reduced to one thing (way) being
valuable and the other not valuable

The
critique of development of well being (bien vive) can help serve as a
practice of reframing our economic ideas

Multiplicity
is a strength

Some
people think of economy like they think of natural law – like gravity our
economy must be the law of nature.In other words unmovable, unchangeable, rigid

How do
we design processes to open up public participation in education while
fighting off corporate interests that want control of teaching?

The
left is lacking in developing an alternative economic vision and building
support for it.The public wants
to see a real alternative vision

An
independent media is a key ingredient in helping create an alternative
economic and political program

We
need a Triple bottom line – people, profit, planet – the economy can’t
simply just be about profit

Who do
we need to help us move things along?How do we figure out how to work with them?

One
criminal justice worker said he’d never seen a black kid with a job shoot
anyone

Creating
pathways involves deep moral passages

We are
on a train heading for a brick wall and the people driving it think going
faster and faster is the right thing to do

A key
step toward transformation is for us to reject the notion of American
exceptionalism that carries with it the belief that corporate capitalism
equals democracy and freedom and is the only way to proceed

You’ve
got to work in the present moment and do the best you can

We
need compassion and radical insight into the interdependence of all things

The
biggest uncertainty is how will human beings act in the coming hard
times.The safest way out is to
nurture one another in a loving solidarity

The US
is the biggest obstacle to peace and sustainability because of its
arrogance

People
change when they have an alternative that is practical and easy to
understand.Helps when there are
already successful examples in motion – like coops and places where
military installations have been converted

When
you want to transcend the present system it helps to include some features
of the past – people like to feel comfortable about change

We
need a more just and more humane way of organizing our societies – a more
perfect union

People
want practical examples because they are afraid of change and want
reassurances that they will be safe as things change. They fear being left
behind

Local
governments and business community could decide to target their economic
procurement power toward worker-owned coops and ESOP’s

We
should treat evil as a system failure and route around it (MIT guys again)

A
conference like this should have a direct action component – we need to
model taking action so that when folks go home they will do it there as
well.Why not organize a march
thru town during the conference?Bring our message directly to the public – make it a public
participatory production.Our
great thoughts and words must be shared in the streets where all America
is stopped at traffic lights sitting in their expensive cars

We
must figure out how to unfreeze blocked institutions and move people to
action while there is still time